Pretty much as low as we are likely to find this side of Christmas. A
lender repossessed the home of a Waterford couple which they shared with
their special needs child. The pair had previously worked for Waterford
Crystal but had since lost their jobs when the company folded. In debt
and arrears they desperately tried to save their home. The lender,
Stepstone Mortgage Funding Ltd, usuriously refused to renegotiate the
terms. Phone calls met with no compassion. The couple had earlier
written to the company requesting negotiation but were ignored. The
excuse later given by the company was a ‘regrettable’ administrative
oversight. Waffle.

The monthly payment amounted to the not inconsiderable sum of 2,422 euro. In
most households two jobs would need to be held down to sustain that
level of repayment. Unable to obtain mortgage interest relief because
they were in arrears the couple, in a bid to retain their home, offered
the lender a monthly payment of 800 euro. No mean feat for a family on
benefits. Stepstone demanded 1000 euro knowing this to be beyond the
family’s means. ‘I offered all my carer’s allowance, they said no’ the
tear filled mother explained. Even the judge asked legal counsel
representing the lenders to accept the 800 euro but not an inch were the
heartless swine of Stepstone willing to budge. Then the company had the
chutzpah to issue the following statement: ‘we do all that we can to
assist borrowers when they find themselves in financial difficulty ...
repossession will always be a last resort.’ Bollix.

The judge hearing the case offered words of sympathy, protesting that he
was powerless to do anything other than help the powerful pursue their
quarry. That he did not adjourn and in the interim call for a moratorium
on all home repossessions was because he did not want to. Rather he
rebuked those who took out loans on the grounds that if they borrowed
money they were under obligation to repay. Of course, but under what
conditions? Here the judge was confirming his role - to uphold the
strong against the weak. Just to rub it in Stepstone asked for their
legal costs to be paid for by the family. The ‘sympathetic’ judge
awarded that as well.

Green Party senator Dan Boyle promised that the case would be raised at
cabinet level and accused the lender of having behaved “appallingly”.
His party colleague TD Paul Gogarty might shout ‘fuck you too Senator
Boyle’ in exasperation at Boyle having spoken out on behalf of the
disadvantaged but it is good that he raised it nonetheless. Labour’s
Ciaran Lynch told the Dail, that subprime lenders like Stepstone were
‘screwing people to the wall.’

The victim of Stepstone, a young mother, exclaimed, ‘I’m sorry I ever
went to them, they brought me to hell and back and they can have the
house.’ But they should not have it. It would be a crime were that to
happen. The recently proposed Home Defence law should not be instituted
to afford protection only against the John ‘Frog’ Wards of the world.
But we would be justified in suspecting if Padraig Nally had confronted
and dealt with Stepstone in the same fashion as he did with Ward, he
would still be in prison struggling through a life sentence. Nally was
right when he told RTE that ‘the criminal is more active now than ever
in this country’; active in their pursuit of the homes of people who
don’t have the economic power to either pay up or resist.

Any Home Defence law that would seek to defend homes against gangsters
would not restrict itself to warding off small fry. It could do much
worse than acknowledge that when the aggressor forces a weaker opponent
into a retreat, scorched earth is a time honoured tactic designed to
render worthless the ground taken.

If some Christmas spirit animated by an anathema for Scrooge was to
bulldoze the house to the ground before the greedy lenders got their
hands on it few would really care, viewing it as the type of Christmas
present Stepstone should get every year and throughout the year to boot.